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Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Adam Adams Bayham Township Elgin County Ontario - Letter 2

Adam Adams circa 1900

The
Canadian Letter:

This
letter was written to John and Mary (Sayers) Dale, Aldhurst Farm, Capel,
Surrey, England from their nephew Adam Adams, eldest son of Thomas and Sarah
Adams.The Adams
family was living on the Adams Farm in Bayham, Elgin County, Ontario, Canada near
the village of Vienna, at the time this letter was written.

Letter 2

Vienna, Elgin County

June 13th 1857

Dear Cousins,

By referring to
our memorandum book we are astonished to find that nearly four months have
elapsed since we received your lengthy and instructive letter. We have often
talked of you and have spent much time in looking over the drawing you sent us
in your letter, it was quite a curiosity. Mother and Father knew it direct when
they saw it. We were all much pleased with it and intend to preserve it as one
of our treasures, it now lies before me, if I am a judge. I think it is very
well done and we all thank you kindly for the pains you took in drawing it in
order to afford us the pleasure of seeing your English home. Mother has pointed
out to us the window of the bedroom where I have rested my weary limbs during
the night watches. I almost regret that I can remember nothing about it. Of
England's pleasant scenery Ihave not
the least recollection, the ocean, the wide blue ocean I can remember nothing
about, but I often entertain the hope that if spared I may yet behold the Atlantic's wave.

As a substitute
for the sea we can see the great lakes around us and father says that it does
himself almost as much good to look on the water of the lake as it used to when
in England he could gaze on the billows of the sea.I have said that we can see the lakes, you
must conclude from this that we could stand at our door and see the boats on Lake
Erie or Ontario, this is not the case however as we are about six miles from
Erie shore and still further from Ontario. But it's nothing to take a walk to
the former lake. On the Queen’s birthday, I enjoyed myself greatly rambling
along on the banks to the east and west of Port Burwell.

We have just concluded to send you a map of
our province and then you will be able to see for yourselves where we live and
the different towns and villages that are springing up everywhere in our beloved country. We will enclose the map
in a newspaper, there can be no harm in that, and I dare say, it will be
interesting to you all to look over the counties, county towns, rivers of
Canada.We have not yet procured the
map, we shall endeavor to do so before we mail this scroll and perhaps we may
try to give a few explanations about the map and send them with this.

It was quite
interesting for us to learn your ages, and now we will proceed to give you
ours. I was 20 on the 13th January last, Thomas who was born soon
after our arrival in America will be 18 on the 13th of next month, Sarah our only
sister was 15 on the 11th December last and John the youngest was 12
on the 20th of last January.

We were glad to
learn that you were all in health and are thankful to be able to say the same
of ourselves. We regret that we cannot with this send Father's and Mother's
likenesses so that we might have Uncles and Aunts in return, but that will make
no difference though. We hope we shall Uncle and Aunts portrait with your next
letter and Father and Mother will have

theirs taken as soon as a daguerreotypist – comes this way.

I suppose by this
time you have read through the book entitled the 'Backwoods of Canada' if the
book treats of nothing but the backwoods I expect you were glad when you came
to the last page, for what can be more dreary, more forbidding than
the backwoods either of Canada or of the United States, that is where the trees
have been felled and where fire has swept over the prostrated forest leaving
the logs and stumps of trees as black as black can be, if these are the places
you have been reading about, where there is now and then a shanty and where the
inhabitants are as ignorant as savages you must conclude that Canada is a
heathenish place. But I am going too far, I have been presuming that you have
not read of the beautiful scenery that is to be seen in Canada, its fine farms
and fine houses, it’s pretty villages and large cities, its noble rivers, its beautiful hills and fertile vales.

We were rather surprised
to learn that you read the journal called 'The Friend' from Philadelphia. We
have several numbers of the same work, I might say several volumes.Father and Mother paid a visit to some
friends about 20 miles from where we live not long since. They had taken “The
Friend” for many years and they sent by Father and Mother when they returned
quite a load of reading in the shape of a box called 'the Friend'. We find that
a great deal of information is derived from them.

You ask what kind
of livestock we keep - we have horses, cows, sheep and pigs. We keep poultry
but no bees. I don't suppose it would be so profitable to keep bees in this
country as it is in England – I suppose the birds have been singing a long time
in the Old Country, here we have birds singing or chattering. I expect you would
call it, but although the birds of this country are not renown for their song
they are, I have read, far more gaudy than the birds of England. Among the
beautiful birds to be seen here, the soldier bird (or what the people here call
the soldier bird) stands first, most of its feathers are a fiery red, the rest
are a jet black colour, it is very still
and shy. Instead of the nightingale we
have the whippowill. We have just been
looking over Webster's large dictionary to see what he says about the
whippowill, he tells

us it is allied to the night hawk or nightjar and we find
that the nightjar is a British bird, also called the Goat Sucker. It seeks its
prey in the dusk and is remarkable for the jarring sound it makes when it darts
down towards the earth. But I will now stop telling you about all our birds.

I must say a
little about our crops and then conclude. On our farm we grow wheat, oats, maize, buckwheat,
peas and turnips. You supposed that the climate was too cold for tobacco. We do
not grow that article but there is a good deal of it grows in the province.

We shall write
more particularly when we write again, if this can be called writing – we are actually ashamed of it. Especially as your epistle lies
before me. We did not think of writing until we could send Father's and
Mother's portraits but we do not know exactly when they can have them taken, so
Mother urged us to write this morning merely to let you know that we were well
and that we received your letter and so on.

Father and Thomas
have been planting potatoes this morning, they have finished now and are at present
out in the woods splitting rails to make fences with. You will wonder no doubt
to hear that we have just finished planting, the spring has been
rather backward this year but now all crops at least wheat, oats, peas look very well. I must break off.